Background: Complete denture wearers show lower levels of bite force than dentate subjects. This has a significant influence on their chewing efficiency. In this study an attempt was made to investigate the effect of the impression technique on the maximum bite force in complete denture wearers. Materials and methods: The patients selected for this research were 12 edentulous patients. Three different techniques for registering the final impression were made; the mucostatic, mucofunctional, and the selective pressure impression technique. Two sets of upper and lower denture bases and one set of upper and lower dentures were constructed for each subject. Intraoral and extraoral instruments and devices, as well as a computer program were used

The development of new building materials, able of absorbing more energy is an active research area. Engineering Cementitious Composite (ECC) is a class of super-elastic fiberreinforced cement composites characterized by high ductility and tight crack width control. The use of bendable concrete produced from Portland Limestone Cement (PLC) may lead to an interest in new concrete mixes. Impact results of bendable concrete reinforced with steel mesh and polymer fibers will provide data for the use of this concrete in areas subject to impact loading. The experimental part consisted of compressive strength and impact resistance tests along with a result comparison with unreinforced concrete. Concrete samples, with dimensions of 100×

This study presents experimental and numerical investigations on seven one-way, reinforced concrete (RC) slabs with a new technique of slab weight reduction using polystyrene-embedded arched blocks (PEABs). All slabs had the same dimensions, steel reinforcement, and concrete compressive strength. One of these slabs was a solid slab, which was taken as a control slab, while the other six slabs were cast with PEABs. The main variables were the ratio of the length of the PEABs to the length of the slab (lp/L) and the ratio of the height of the PEABs to the total slab depth (hP/H). The minimum decrease in the ultimate load capacity was about 6% with a minimum reduction in the slab weight of 15%. In contrast, the maximum decrease in the

This paper is devoted to investigate the effect of internal curing technique on the properties of self-compacting concrete (SCC). In this study, SCC is produced by using silica fume (SF) as partial replacement by weight of cement with percentage of (5%), sand is partially replaced by volume with saturated fine lightweight aggregate (LWA) which is thermostone chips as internal curing material in three percentages of (5%, 10% and 15%) for SCC, two external curing conditions water and air. The experimental work was divided into three parts: in the first part, the workability tests of fresh SCC were conducted. The second part included conducting compressive strength test and modulus of rupture test at ages of (7, 28 and 90). The third part i

Concrete filled steel tube (CFST) columns are being popular in civil engineering due to their superior structural characteristics. This paper investigates enhancement in axial behavior of CFST columns by adding steel fibers to plain concrete that infill steel tubes. Four specimens were prepared: two square columns (100*100 mm) and two circular columns (100 mm in diameter). All columns were 60 cm in length. Plain concrete mix and concrete reinforced with steel fibers were used to infill steel tube columns. Ultimate axial load capacity, ductility and failure mode are discussed in this study. The results showed that the ultimate axial load capacity of CFST columns reinforced with steel fibers increased by 28% and 20 % for circular and square c

The experimental and numerical analysis was performed on pipes suffering large plastic deformation through expanding them using rigid conical shaped mandrels, with three different cone angles (15◦, 25◦, 35◦) and diameters (15, 17, 20) mm. The experimental test for the strain results investigated the expanded areas. A numerical solution of the pipes expansion process was also investigated using the commercial finite element software ANSYS. The strains were measured for each case experimentally by stamping the mesh on the pipe after expanding, then compared with Ansys results. No cracks were generated during the process with the selected angles. It can be concluded that the strain decreased with greater angles of con

Many studies have been published to address the growing issues in wireless communication systems. Space-Time Block Coding (STBC) is an effective and practical MIMO-OFDM application that can address such issues. It is a powerful tool for increasing wireless performance by coding data symbols and transmitting diversity using several antennas. The most significant challenge is to recover the transmitted signal through a time-varying multipath fading channel and obtain a precise channel estimation to recover the transmitted information symbols. This work considers different pilot patterns for channel estimation and equalization in MIMO-OFDM systems. The pilot patterns fall under two general types: comb and block types, with

Key generation for data cryptography is vital in wireless communications security. This key must be generated in a random way so that can not be regenerated by a third party other than the intended receiver. The random nature of the wireless channel is utilized to generate the encryption key. However, the randomness of wireless channels deteriorated over time due to channel aging which casing security threats, particularly for spatially correlated channels. In this paper, the effect of channel aging on the ciphering key generations is addressed. A proposed method to randomize the encryption key each coherence time is developed which decreases the correlation between keys generated at consecutive coherence times. When compared to the